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ChatGPT translated a passage I wrote from Chinese to English:
Here's the translation of the passage you provided:
"I feel that what I wrote yesterday was not clear, so I wanted to elaborate:
When you reify awareness, it becomes one whole, encompassing everything as its parts, just like the ocean and its waves. But when you deconstruct the waves and the ocean, the whole and the parts, it's merely the bright, luminous, pellucid, vividness of sound, taste, and color – the basis upon which waves and ocean are mere imputations of. Awareness is just a name but empty of its own existence, like how 'weather' is a term denoting rain, wind, sunlight, and all dynamic manifestations of ungraspable nature, and is not a container or singular overarching entity, nor does it transform into or modulate as them. Similarly, awareness isn't an unchanging singular overarching entity that permeates, encompasses, subsumes, or even modulates as everything. What's seen, heard, and felt is clear, vivid, luminous, and crystal-like. 'Awareness' is merely a term to describe such, not permeated/pervaded by a singular essence of awareness across all diverse sights, sounds, and sensations. Ultimately, awareness is seen as not possessing its own intrinsic nature, not just as a dualistic nature of a background witness, but also empty of a substance that possesses 'oneness with everything' or a unity with all things. And the 'awareness substance' is seen through without leaving a trace, leaving only the luminosity and clarity that is all appearances, not just a state of self-forgetfulness but a wisdom insight. As Scott Kiloby, a teacher from America, once said: 'If you see awareness as no different from everything, and those things are not separate "things", why use the term 'awareness'? You are left only with the world, your life, and the diversity of experiences.' Another teacher, Dr. Greg Goode, who initially practiced Advaita but later delved deeply into Buddhism, told me: '
It looks your Bahiya Sutta experience helped you see awareness in a different way, more .... empty. You had a background in a view that saw awareness as more inherent or essential or substantive?
I had an experience like this too. I was reading a sloka in Nagarjuna's treatise about the "prior entity," and I had been meditating on "emptiness is form" intensely for a year. These two threads came together in a big flash. In a flash, I grokked the emptiness of awareness as per Madhyamika. This realization is quite different from the Advaitic oneness-style realization. It carries one out to the "ten-thousand things" in a wonderful, light and free and kaleidoscopic, playful insubstantial clarity and immediacy. No veils, no holding back. No substance or essence anywhere, but love and directness and intimacy everywhere..."
Among the practitioners I've met (be it Buddhist or non-Buddhist), of those that can realize the nonduality of perceiver and perceived, even if they transcend the duality of the seer and the seen, they still retain the oneness (inherent ontological singular overarching substance) of Advaita, not realizing the Buddhist anatta, still leaving traces. They might experience the mindlessness of 'in the seen just the seen', but still retain the view of a really existing singular pervasive mind, so experience and view are not in sync.
Thus, Master Guoru, a lineage successor of Ch'an Master Shengyan, also said in the book I gave you, 'Believing that there exists a pure mind is absolutely wrong. "True illumination without illumination", "One mind is empty of Mind", these phrases are all about the ultimate reality of all dharmas. The Record of Bodhisattva Shanwei also mentions: "In the nature of extinction, there's no extinction; in true awareness, there's no cognizance", which can be understood theoretically.' Patriarch Bodhidharma also said, 'Both delusive thoughts and wisdom cease forever; when both luminosity and illumination end, remaining serene and non-active, this is called the supreme.' Damo's discourse on No-mind: 'The disciple then suddenly realized, knowing that outside the mind there's no phenomena, and outside of phenomena, there's no mind. Every action and use became free, breaking all webs of doubt, with no more attachments.'
🙏."
(Note: The translation tries to capture the essence and literal meaning of the text while ensuring comprehensibility in English. Some Buddhist terms are kept as close to their original meaning as possible.)
